Rapture's Edge

her father’s journal, thereby proving Dominus’s guilt and their own innocence?

The serum, a little voice inside her head whispered. They want it for themselves.

A chill ran over her skin. She pushed the thought aside, but it kept swimming back in front of her eyes, resolute, damning. She watched D’s face carefully as she asked, “Do they know about the serum?”

His expression did not change. His voice remained neutral. “No. As I said, they never read your father’s journal, and as far as the Bellatorum know he never developed it, just tested it successfully.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

She stared at him for a long moment, her stomach in knots, her heart beating frantically against her breastbone once again. “Why wouldn’t you show them the journal, Demetrius? If it could prove you’d done nothing wrong?”

His head tilted to one side on the pillow. Something changed in his face. A hardening, a slight closure that indicated an awareness of her distrust, perhaps, she couldn’t be sure. There was a new hollowness in his voice when he spoke, a new tightness around his mouth.

“I’ve read that journal, Eliana. Over and over and over, searching for some kind of clue as to where you might have gone when you left. There wasn’t any, of course, but what your father planned for you…your brother…all the terrible things he did and wanted to do…that’s not something I would ever let anyone read. That’s not for anyone else’s eyes. Especially theirs. The other colonies can take their threats and go straight to hell—I’d never let you be humiliated like that. Never.” His voice darkened. “There are some secrets we should take with us to the grave.”

Oh, what those words did to her. If she was conflicted and confused before, this was the cherry that topped her triple-scoop ice cream sundae of confusion. The words seemed sincere, but the tone he spoke them in and the look on his face seemed…what? Odd, if nothing else. Protection is the motivation he claimed, her protection, and she might have believed it, but for that final sentence that held a strange ring of prophecy. There are some secrets we should take with us to the grave. And for that oddness in his manner, which might have been hurt at her disbelief.

Or might have been fake hurt, intended as a diversion.

Killers enjoy creating diversions, Eliana.

Even now, Silas’s voice echoed in her head.

She slowly lay down and pressed her back against the hard expanse of D’s chest, avoiding his eyes, avoiding the sudden tangle of flying chicken feathers that were her thoughts. “I see,” she whispered, not really seeing anything at all.

He lay behind her, tense and silent, until he let out a breath and dragged the blankets up around them and pulled her tight against his chest once more. They lay like that for a long time, until she felt his breathing grow more regular, his heartbeat more slow. When she was certain he was almost asleep, she whispered into the dark, “Do you really believe males are made to protect and serve females, or is that just pillow talk?”

He mumbled something, and she turned her head to hear him better. “If you hadn’t already worn me out, woman, I’d serve you right now.” He chuckled softly. “But it’ll have to wait ’til morning. I’ll show you exactly how a male should protect and serve his female in the morning.”

But when morning came and D stretched and opened his eyes, the bed was empty, the sheets beside him cold.

Eliana was already gone.

25 Crazy Person

Mel awoke with a start to the feel of a hand clamped over her mouth.

She bolted upright in bed, a scream strangled in her throat, but let out a huge sigh of relief when she saw it was only Eliana, crouched beside her bed in the dark, pale and wild-eyed with a finger to her lips like some kind of mute, blue-haired ghost.

“What are you doing, crazy person?” Mel hissed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Get dressed,” came the urgent, whispered response. “Wake up the others and go down to the Tabernacle and wait for me. I’m going to go see Alexi—”

“Alexi? What? You are crazy, E, it’s the middle of the night—”

“We need to get everyone out of here, and Alexi’s place is big enough for all of us.” Her voice darkened. “Most of us.”

Mel stared at her, long and hard, through the shadows of the room. She smelled Eliana’s fear and rage like the sour tang of food left out too long in the sun, and something else that surprised and pleased her in equal measure: the dark, spiced musk and masculine power that could only be Demetrius.

“Tell me what’s happened. I know you saw Demetrius.”

Eliana started like she’d just jumped from behind a door and yelled, Boo! Mel said, “I spent a lot of time crying on his shoulder, sweetie. I remember exactly what he smells like. Spill it.”

Resigned to the fact that Mel wasn’t going to budge until she knew what was going on, Eliana let out a frustrated sigh and dragged her hands through her hair. She sat beside her on the bed and closed her eyes. “He brought me my father’s journal. I read it, and it was…bad.” Though a whisper, her voice grew hard, harder than Mel had ever heard it. “It was worse than bad. Your hunch was right, Mel. Nothing is what it seems.”

Mel didn’t know what to say. The way she was talking, just the way her lips shaped the words, gave her pause. “And…and Demetrius? What about him?”

Even in the dark, Mel could see the heat suffuse Eliana’s face. She chewed on her lower lip, then, in a motion so out of character it spoke volumes, hid her face in her hands.

Mel clapped her own hands together silently in a pantomime of glee and bounced up and down on the mattress. “Oh my God, you did it! Tell me everything!”

From behind her hands Eliana scoffed, “What are you, twelve?”

Mel was too busy swooning to care about the acid in her tone. “Was he gentle? Was he rough? Was it over too fast? Oh my God, I hope it wasn’t over too fast, he’s soooooo hot—”

“He told me he loved me.”

This was said with so much pathos, such bleak hopelessness, she might as well have just said, He told me to burn in hell. She stared at Eliana, who had dropped her hands to her lap and was staring at them as if she’d never seen them before, as if her own ten fingers were strangers, not to be trusted. Something huge and ugly seemed to be growing in her, an evil, cancerous blossom of rage or despair, flowering slowly to life.

“Why is that bad? What exactly happened?”

Weary, weary, Eliana answered, “He’s lying about something, Mel. I don’t know if it’s that, or if it’s about what really happened the night my father died or what, but he’s hiding something.” She paused, said more softly, “They know about the serum. I can’t help thinking…”

“No,” was Mel’s instant reply. “Not him.”

Eliana turned her head and looked at her with the kind of glassy eyes you see on victims of natural disasters or wars—shell-shocked, darting. Haunted.

“That’s what I thought about my father. That’s what I thought about Silas, and my brother, too. Apparently being a good judge of character is not one of my Gifts. In fact, I think we can safely say I suck at it.”

Mel took her friend’s cold, cold hand and squeezed it in her own. “I can assure you my perceived awesomeness is bona fide, however, so you’re not totally hopeless.” The ghost of a smile was her only answer before Eliana looked away. “What did you find out about Silas?”

Eliana’s face hardened again. The expression reappeared too quickly and easily, as if it were a default setting and every other look that crossed it just a transient visitor. It was eerie, and Mel didn’t like it at all.

“He’s a traitor and a liar, and very soon he’s going to become well acquainted with the edge of my sword.” She hissed a breath through her teeth, then stood and looked down at her with those glassy, shell-shocked eyes.